In magnetic storage devices such as hard disk drives (HDD), read and write heads are used to magnetically read and write information to and from the storage media. In a HDD, data is stored on one or more disks in a series of adjacent concentric circles. A HDD comprises a rotary actuator, a suspension mounted on an arm of the rotary actuator, and a slider bonded to the suspension to form a head gimbal assembly. In a traditional HDD, the slider carries a read/write head, and radially floats over the recording surface of the disk under the control of a servo control system that selectively position the head over a specific track of the disk.
During read and write operations, the head moves adjacent to the recording surface of the disk at the Head Disk Interface (HDI) in preparation for performing read and write operations. During this movement, intermittent contact between the head and disk surface may occur at the HDI, particularly at low fly heights (FH) between the flying head and the rotating disk. The conventional disk includes a conventional carbon overcoat to protect the magnetic recording layer of the disk and a conventional lubrication layer on the carbon overcoat to prevent the head from crashing. More recently, the conventional read/write head also includes a dynamic flying height (DFH) adjust to control the FH. The DFH adjust acts by lowering the head portion of the slider to the disk by applying thermal actuation during read and write operations.
With areal recording densities rapidly increasing on the HDD, however, the FH continues to decrease, approaching sub 1 nm ranges. This decrease in FH decreases the available spacing margin for the slider. Even slight pitches or roll angles of the slider at this FH result in head-disk contacts. Accordingly, it is desirable to manufacture a hard disk with a lubrication layer that increases the DFH touch-down power by minimizing the spacing between the disk head and disk surface while maintaining good tribology performance.